I have flown since 1985 and am quitting owing to medical
reasons. I have 6300 plus hours in singles with commercial and intrument
ratings. I have averaged 250 to 400 hours per year especially in the last decade
since I am an author and a lecturer specializing in the fine arts (I was once
the director of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.) In fact since 9/11 I
always flew my 182 RG Cessna or my 206 Turbo TKS-equipped to every lecture or
book promotion. For 7 years my wife and I flew to Anguilla for the New Year's
holidays. Last September I flew the 206 from New York to San Francisco and back
(22.5 out and 17.8 back) and had a wonderful time.
I have owned
Airgator equipment virtually since the company started, progressing from an
iPaq to a Navpad. Before that I used another firm's primitive low-earth
satelite system. Without the Airgator superior programs I would never have been
able to avoid dozens of hours of hazardous weather. The beauty of the system is
that it enforces prudence in the air. Many times I saw weather that kept me
happily in a motel room for a night or two. In the air I was able to amend my
clearances repeatedly for safe passages or a confident stop and wait for better
conditions. On the way to San Francisco last September I was able to calculate
from the Airgator data that it would be very unwise to try to get to a field
near Salt Lake from Rapid City and so I made a safe landing at Casper WY. No
other systems I know of would have given me that complex data in minutes.
My 206 had
both the Airgator and the Bendix weather systems. Although Bendix was very
good, Airgator was far more reliable and far more informative. I recently took
my Airgator equipment with me on a Cessna 182 to the Bahamas and was pleased
(yet not surprised) when the Garmin 1000 weather system built into the 182
failed and the Airgator continued so my pilot friend and I could safely
navigate around a pair of seriously threatening t-storm systems.
Since my 206
is allowed to penetrate icing I found the accurate cloud tops and layers vital
for safe navigation through a multiple of cloud layers.
In my opinion
there is no better situation-awareness system than the new 3D horizonatal and
vertical position on the NOAA approach plates.
Bottom line:
Airgator programs makes one a more prudent and professional pilot.
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